


all wonders that remain, become simple fact

by anupturnedboat



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Complicated Relationships, Drabble, F/M, Love Confessions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-11
Updated: 2014-06-11
Packaged: 2018-02-04 05:34:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1767379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anupturnedboat/pseuds/anupturnedboat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness. ~ John Muir</p>
<p>The first time Finn tells a girl he is in love with her (and really means it), it is all chaos, and running and blood.</p>
            </blockquote>





	all wonders that remain, become simple fact

**Author's Note:**

> Post 1x12 Drabble
> 
> TV Show Canon Compliant

The first time Finn tells a girl he is in love with her (and really means it), it is all chaos, and running and blood. Clarke has a gruesome looking gash over one eye and dried blood on her cheek. She pauses, stiff and guarded. She does not forgive him for not telling her about Raven.

The timing is all wrong, but it doesn’t change the fact that it is true. True before they were captured. Even before the fallout shelter. It had simply unfurled, unexpected and wondrous the day they had dug through plants looking for something she called winter cherry.

_Reddish orange berries_ , she had barked over her shoulder. S _mall dark green leaves_.

She tells him it can help the kids that are sick, dehydrated, or can’t take a shit. It can be used in poultices for the ones that burn their own dumb hands messing around.

He watches her in the fading sunlight and it just takes shape even as she ignores him completely, consumed and persistent about everyone surviving. He’s been keeping an eye out for that damned shrub ever since.

Being here is a sentence, but it also feels like a chance to live. Suddenly he isn’t the Finn Collins who wasted a month’s worth of oxygen on a moronic stunt. He had become someone better. Not _for_ Clarke, or _because_ of Clarke, but because she exists in the first place, and this was always the path he was meant to follow. 

But there isn’t time to explain that, or that he hadn’t omitted certain details about his life before on purpose. They abandon the camp in a hurry, a brick in his gut. All of them trudge through mile after mile of wilderness. Clarke is up front with Bellamy, so he brings up the rear and mulls over combinations of words. He loves Raven, has for most of his life, but he isn’t in love with her. Something he should have come clean about a long time ago. 

But he does care, and he pushes through the stragglers to check on her. Even wounded, she wants nothing to do with him. She can’t walk so others take turns pulling her on a make-shift gurney. She glares at him when he moves to take up one end. 

It is frigid and dark when they finally stop for the night. They do not build a fire. Too much of a risk if the grounders are near enough to see the smoke. 

Clarke chooses a spot as far away from him as possible, draws her knees up to her chin, her back against a rock. It feels like they are all going to die out here, but then she lifts her head, catches him watching. She doesn’t flip him off, or stomp over and punch him in the face, so maybe there is hope. For a fraction of a heartbeat, it feels like he can telepathically beam everything he is thinking straight to her, and she will just - understand. 

But then Bellamy is there, sliding down next to her. 

Finn rolls onto his back, searching for stars in a sky that is mostly black.


End file.
